Why Movement Candidates Always Disappoint

Posted on September 16, 2010 by David S. Meyer

The Tea Party, like many American protest movements, jumped into the electoral fray quickly.  This is the way our system is set up; frequent elections mean that activists always seem to have the chance to replace politicians they don’t like with someone they do.

And Tea Party candidates have done very well–at least in Republican primaries.  Slate’s David Weigel has been tracking their efforts; his scorecard shows Tea Partiers beating Republican establishment candidates a little more than half the time.

The terrain gets tougher in the general elections–and in governing.  Movement-supported candidates virtually always disappoint their supporters, but in all kinds of different ways.  They lose, they fail, or they change.

They may be lousy candidates, bad at articulating a message and unlikely to win–and carrying personal baggage to boot.  (This seems to be the early consensus on Christine O’Donnell.)  Sharron Angle’s nomination gave Harry Reid an unexpectedly good shot at retaining his seat.  Supporting the purer movement candidate often means electing the opposing party.

And if they win, hold tight to their ideals, they’ll  be ineffective, unable to deliver on anything that matters to their supporters.  The nasty process of politics demands compromise and delivering less than you wanted–or promised.  Again, the system is set up that way.   If Rand Paul follows his father’s model in Congress, he will develop a record of statements that inspire the faithful and no legislative achievements.

Or, they  may win and become, shockingly, effective politicians, making deals and compromising.

The late “liberal lion” of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, constantly took flack from activists for his willingness–and extraordinary facility, in cutting deals, sponsoring legislation with Utah’s Orrin Hatch, and coordinating with President George W. Bush on No Child Left Behind.  The resulting legislation was always so much less than liberal supporters wanted–but there was resulting legislation.

Actually, there’s no need to go back to Ted.  Isn’t Barack Obama a perfect example of the movement candidate who compromises to try to get things done (e.g., still 50,000 service people in Iraq; no public option for health care)?

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The Tea Party and Grassroots Democracy

Posted on September 15, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Morning Edition features an interview with journalist Jonathan Rauch, discussing the tea party in general, and his article in the current edition of the National Journal.  Some segments of the movement are determined to serve the grassroots under any circumstances, ready to suffer defeats for a long time in order to build a democratic conservative movement.

Rauch cites me as skeptical of their prospects.  Of course, lots of movements start with such aspirations.  (Think Populists, Greens, antinuclear power activists, the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee, Students for a Democratic Society–think about anarcho-syndicalism altogether.)  They can become established Washington interest groups or they can dissipate and fade away—often, both.

Let me know how I’m wrong on this one.

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Purity versus Pragmatism

Posted on September 15, 2010 by David S. Meyer

The Tea Party, like all social movements in America, is facing the dilemma of making inroads in mainstream politics or focusing on articulating its message as clearly as possible.  By virtually all accounts (e.g., NY Times here), the Republican nomination of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware for Senate has undermined what was an excellent prospect for a pick-up.

Even if we let go of Ms. O’Donnell’s particular issues (Karl Rove says she’s “nutty“) the purists have a harder time winning general election than candidates who can move to the center.

And this case isn’t unique:  While Republican nomination of purists in Alaska and Utah are a good bet to win anyway–in Alaska and Utah, other cases are tougher.  The insurgent conservative campaign of Doug Hoffman–against a moderate Republican–virtually handed Democrat Bill Owens the Congressional seat from New York’s 23rd district, a district that had been Republican forever.  The Republicans may take that seat back–but Hoffman is running again.

Republican Senate candidates Sharron Angle (Nevada), Rand Paul (Kentucky), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) and Marco Rubio (Florida) are a tougher sell in their general elections than the alternatives they defeated–or scared off.  Some of them will win.  Maybe this time all of them will win, but the focus on purity is a high risk strategy for social movements in America.  (Read any good history of the Populist movement or think again about Ralph Nader’s presidential candidacies to remember this.)

I’d add that Madison set the system up this way!

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The Numbers Game

Posted on September 14, 2010 by David S. Meyer

When activists stage an event, they want to impress others with their commitment, unity, their worthiness, and their numbers.  (This formulation is from the great sociologist, Charles Tilly.)

They want to show their opponents that they are strong and powerful–and not going to go away.  They want to show their allies in government that there are enough of them to deliver the rewards politicians care about–votes and campaign support, for example.  They want to show potential supporters that they are worthy: perhaps that they are regular folk just like those watching; perhaps that they are particularly well-informed.

In general, the more dramatic and disruptive the action, the fewer people you need to make an impact.  But the large demonstration on the mall in Washington, DC* is such a staple of American politics that large numbers matter.

Glenn Beck joked at the August 28th “Restoring Honor” rally that he had “…just gotten word from the media that there is over 1,000 people here today.”  Later, he offered estimates of 300-500,000 attendees.  Mass media reports were all over the place, from CBS’s estimate of 87,000 up to a few hundred thousand in other mainstream sources, including The New York Times and NBC News.

CBS published photographs showing large areas of open space:

But how do you know?  Activists routinely inflate their best estimates of crowd size.  Sometimes, it’s wishful thinking; often, they anticipate that police or media will deliberately low ball the count.  Certainly you can’t take their word on it.  The most earnest and intrepid reporter on the ground is poorly positioned to count into four or more digits (not a skill routinely developed in journalism school).

Crowd experts get photos from above and count.  They cut the field into grids, count some of them, multiply, and offer something of a fact-based estimate.  CBS actually paid consultants to take aerial pictures and count. Here’s an example they posted:

Of course, this isn’t incredibly precise.  People come and go at large rallies, particularly longer ones, and they may be huddling together to hear a speech, dancing, or sitting on lawn chairs.  Do high school and college students take up less space than older, uh, more substantial (?) people?

In Washington that weekend, I was struck by how many people I saw carrying folding lawn chairs.  Here’s a photo from CNN

I can’t remember seeing so many chairs at any demonstration I’ve attended in the past.  Maybe it’s the crowd, or maybe, as sociologist Bob Edwards suggests, it’s better lawn chairs.

You can count buses or hotel rooms.  Indeed, a hotel clerk in Washington, DC told me that the entire city was sold out for the Friday before the rally, and hoteliers were honoring the demand by charging exceptionally high rates.  But some crowds are more likely to camp out on friends’ floors and pack the hotel rooms than others.  I’d expect that younger (poorer) people are more likely to take the overnight bus from New York or Boston than to come in the night before.

The National Parks Service used to provide the estimate mainstream media quoted, but stopped doing so in 1996 in the controversy about the (maybe not exactly) Million Man March the previous year.  Now, mainstream sources generally report broad ranges (even of hundreds of thousands) or competing claims.  And readers and viewers seem to accept the estimates of the people they like.

Steven Doig, a journalism professor who consulted for CBS, explains the methods and the controversies on his blog.  The basic story is that people who stage the event are unhappy and untrusting when he finds fewer people than they announced.

Meanwhile, Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann–who was there–announced afterward that “We’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today – because we were witnesses.”

Alas, such witness testimony tends to be based on faith, rather than fact–not always a big problem for the committed.

* See historian Lucy Barber’s wonderful book, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Tradition (University of California Press, 2004)

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March for tolerance?

Posted on September 13, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Note the flags

Religious Freedom USA reports that 1,000 people marched in lower Manhattan to support tolerance for religious diversity (in general) and the establishment of a new Islamic center a few blocks from Ground Zero.

Apparently, most of the marchers were local–and a majority of Manhattan residents support the center.

In the United States it’s harder to get people out to a demonstration to support what the government is already doing–in this case, allowing local real estate markets and zoning governance to decide who gets to occupy what spaces.

But protest provokes protest.  Protest against what opponents have dubbed the “ground zero mosque” brought people who probably don’t spend much time thinking about zoning or new construction out in the streets.  In contemporary American politics, virtually any movement of potential consequence can generate an opposing movement.

The demonstrators claimed the same symbols as their opponents, notably the American flags.  Obviously, these flags mean different things to different people.  In showing the flag, activists mean to associate ostensibly consensual symbols of America with their cause.

I couldn’t find much coverage of this march.  Partly, it was crowded out of the news by reports on Freedom Works Tea Party demonstration in Washington DC and the rather expensive commemoration of September 11 staged by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.  The numbers were smaller, the political threat invisible, and the politics–moderation and tolerance–much less dramatic.

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